Principles of Accounting

Principles of Accounting

In this day and age you can fulfill your shopping needs in many ways. Two of these ways are your conventional brick and mortar store or you can shop online. Retailers who only sell through Internet have lower on-line prices than retailers who also sell through conventional stores. On average, prices of these goods are 15 percent cheaper on Internet, but if a single item is bought transport costs can make it as expensive to buy over Internet as in a conventional store (if a basket of goods is bought it is some 10 percent cheaper on Internet since transport costs are fixed).

Two companies that can be compared in this shopping fashion are Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. You're probably familiar with both of these retailers for book lovers, which are both, traded publicly on the Nasdaq market.

Amazon.com is a terrific website where you can browse around, check out various books in any category you'd like, and even read other people's reviews of your chosen reading material. If you see something you like, you can purchase it and have it conveniently appear on your doorstep as quickly as the next day. This is great for those people who can't or just don't want to make there way out to the store for whatever reason.

Barnes & Noble on the other hand is a wonderful store where you can pick up just about any book or magazine for purchase or just sit around in the store and enjoy some good reading and a cup of java. This can cater to the needs of the consumer who likes to get his hands on the merchandise and examine it closely before they purchase it. It also is just right for the book worm who loves to take there lunch break sitting reading a book in a quiet comfortable environment.

The race to soak up as much of the market as possible has been highly intensified by the process of eCommerce. Some companies choose to base their entire operations on the Internet, for example, Amazon.com. On the other hand there are already brick and mortar storefronts that also wish to deal business on the Internet, for example, Barnes & Noble. These two companies run on a completely different structure and business model, but have one thing in common; they sell books. Amazon.com is a virtual organization having not one physical storefront. This is ...